1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to scrolling, navigation and page jumping, for instance in browsers for mobile telephones.
2. Discussion of Related Art
In today's mobile browsers it is hard to navigate and act at the same time. The user can either jump from link to link or scroll but not both at the same time.
Scrolling is done using two navigation keys in some wireless application protocol (WAP) systems. In such WAP browsers the whole Internet page is divided into decks by WML (the WAP equivalent to HTML). With the use of these decks, downloading becomes faster but the screen nonetheless has limitations. HTML does not need decks or pages since the HTML page is able to be shown as one long page. The concept of decks and cards means that each card is a frame displayed on the screen and a collection of interlinked cards as a deck, usually stored in a single WML file. Navigation is done by jumping links in the bottom of the screen Where the page is divided into a screen full of decks the result is that the page is not seen as one big page and scrolling has to be done by jumping. Jumping is a line moving from one text area to another when there is some text that are not links. Scrolling is done by moving line by line and the currently focused link is always the nearest link to the scrolling direction. This causes the user's focus to jump up and down in the screen and causes attraction to be more for surfing. This is because users tend to focus their attention to the thing that is moving, i.e., the link that jumps from link-to-link as the scrolling is taking place. It is natural for the most attractive object to be the high contrast or highlighted area like a link symbol. Such frequently and randomly caused attractions jumping from link-to-link causes frustration to the user who cannot predict when text is to be highlighted or not.
When browsing on a computer, surfing and reading is one smooth action. One can move the mouse on the scroll bar and click the backward or forward button. On a mobile device this is not so easy because of the small screen size and the limited navigation tools. Using the keyboard is more stressful than using a desktop or laptop keyboard. The user will navigate to some locations and use the context by reading the text or watching the pictures. Navigation can then be divided into separate actions. Thus, in some browsers, acting and navigating is divided into two parts so the user can move within a page and stop and act whenever needed. In the PC this is hardly reckonable but is emphasized in mobile devices. Users scroll down, backtrack up again, select the link by clicking a few times left or right and then select the link then scroll down some more and then start to read. This becomes difficult because of the screen size.
In current methods, such as with the Nokia WAP browser provided on the Nokia 9210i, scrolling is not exactly line by line. If the user keeps his eye focused on the top or bottom of the screen, then the user will notice that depending on whether the next line is text or a link and depending on the physical spacing between them, the browser may jump two lines or worse, 1.5 lines, leaving a partially text or link visible to the user. Furthermore, the scrolling is not very consistent when focusing on the top or bottom of the screen (sometimes the browser scrolls line by line from the top, but 1.5 lines from the bottom of that same page).
In pen controlled devices scrolling is done using a pen to tap the scroll bar or draw a page. Acting is done by tapping a link on the screen.